When the Erasmus project is left on its own

Erasmus+ Management · Educational Leadership

When the project is left on its own

What should you do when your leadership team does not support you as it should? Less individual heroics, more structure, more clarity and more institutional responsibility.

Manuel Molina · Secondary School Teacher

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Some educational projects begin as extraordinary opportunities and end up depending almost entirely on one person’s ability to keep going. When that happens, the problem is no longer one of enthusiasm. It is an organisational problem.

There is a scene that has become all too familiar in schools. A project appears as a wonderful opportunity: internationalisation, innovation, Erasmus+, digitalisation, bilingual education, cooperation with companies. The leadership team encourages staff to get involved, somebody agrees to coordinate it and, for the first few months, everything seems to work.

But this is not a new story. Over the years, it has been common to hear the same complaint over coffee with other coordinators — most of them women: everything looked wonderful at the beginning, but later you found yourself alone, or almost alone, and naturally the work simply could not be done properly. Twenty-five years ago, I heard this kind of comment far less often. Over the last ten years, however, in some professional forums it has become almost a collective outcry. What was happening? How was this possible? And inevitably another question appeared: “Will this happen to me?”

WhatsApp groups were — and still are — full of very specific questions: how to deal with an incident, how to interpret a procedure, how to organise a mobility, justify an expense, respond to a family or solve a problem with a partner organisation. But alongside the technical questions came a different kind of message: the frustration of someone who had just received a dismissive response, an unnecessarily rude refusal, or a metaphorical door slammed in her face by a supposed manager who, instead of helping to solve the problem, had left the coordinator completely deflated.

And I deliberately return to the feminine form here. I am not turning a personal observation into a statistic, but in my long experience the overwhelming majority of people I have seen take on these coordination roles have been women; in some groups, easily nine out of ten. Women who, in addition to their normal teaching responsibilities, have sustained an extraordinarily important part of the internationalisation of our schools for years.

Perhaps the problem is not that some people are not resilient enough. Perhaps the problem is that we have built too many projects around the willingness of a few individuals to sacrifice their own time and energy.

Then reality arrives: meetings that do not fit into the timetable, documents prepared in the evenings, dozens of emails, families waiting for answers, partners needing decisions, budgets, platforms, reports, certificates, participant selection, dissemination, incidents and financial justification.

And then the coordinator — very often a woman coordinator — discovers something uncomfortable: the project was institutional when it had to be applied for, but it starts becoming personal when it has to be managed.

1. The first mistake: becoming the hero

When support is missing, many coordinators respond by working even more. It is understandable. It is also a mistake. If a project requires fifteen hours of management and the organisation provides three, the other twelve should not magically disappear into the coordinator’s evenings, weekends and holidays.

Something rather perverse happens when they do: the system appears to be working precisely because one person is personally absorbing its shortcomings. It may work for a while. Then exhaustion, conflict or resignation arrives.

The first solution is to make the workload visible. Tasks, meetings, participants, mobilities, documentation, financial responsibilities, evaluation and follow-up: put them in writing. Not as a complaint, but as a management tool.

2. Negotiate with data, not with feelings

Saying “I am overwhelmed” may generate sympathy. Presenting a clear list of participants, mobilities, partners, reports and pending communications creates something more useful: a basis for decision-making.

The conversation should be straightforward: these are the resources, the hours and the people we have; these are the tasks the project requires. What do we keep? What do we redistribute? What do we scale back?

That shift matters. We are no longer discussing whether a coordinator is “committed enough”. We are discussing organisation. And organisation means making choices.

3. Scale back before you burn out

Some schools try to maintain very large projects with minimal structures. It does not work. If there are not enough resources, the project has to be reduced: fewer optional activities, fewer events, less self-imposed bureaucracy and a stronger focus on essential objectives.

A smaller, well-managed Erasmus+ project can transform a school. A huge Erasmus+ project held together by two exhausted teachers can end up destroying the very people who believed in it most.

4. Build a real team

Another common problem is calling a list of names an “Erasmus team”. A team exists when responsibilities exist. Communication, documentation, students, families, dissemination, evaluation, relationships with partners: one person should not be expected to do everything.

The leadership team must also be involved. That does not mean completing every form, but it does mean removing obstacles, making timetables workable, legitimising decisions and ensuring that resources exist. Coordination does not mean doing everything. Still less does it mean doing everything alone.

And the opposite also needs to be said. In my experience, I have seen a bit of everything — twenty-five years give you plenty of headteachers and managers — but I can say with pride that most of them have been exceptional: always supportive, always ready to help, always finding solutions and, when necessary, taking the reins themselves. Right, Paco? Right, Ernesto? My best wishes to you both.

5. Put agreements in writing

Good intentions are useful in September. Written agreements are useful in February. Before an important project begins, some basic issues should be clear: coordination hours, team membership, division of responsibilities, availability for meetings, cover during mobilities, financial procedures and administrative support.

This protects everyone involved. Institutional memory can be surprisingly fragile.

6. Look for allies

When difficulties appear, coordinators should not lock themselves inside their own school either. Other coordinators, experienced institutions, education authorities, support services and professional networks can save weeks of frustration. Asking for help is not admitting weakness. It is professionalising the management of the project.

A practical resource: the T.R.I.P. Guide

Planning, training, institutions, realistic budgets and impact. The less a project depends on improvisation, the more likely it is to survive changes in staff, leadership and academic years.

Read the Spanish T.R.I.P. Guide →

The article at a glance: warning signs, practical responses and one central idea — fewer heroes, more structure.

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7. Stronger oversight is also needed

There is another part of this problem that deserves more attention: external oversight. Everything cannot be left to the coordinator’s ability to negotiate, endure, ask for help or reorganise the project.

When there are reasonable signs that a school has taken on an Erasmus Accreditation but has subsequently failed to provide the human, organisational and time resources required to deliver it properly, the Spanish National Agency should also look inside the organisation.

An accreditation cannot simply become a badge on a website, an attractive line in a leadership project or a source of institutional prestige. It brings responsibilities with it, and there should be a real structure capable of sustaining those responsibilities.

The monitoring mechanisms already exist. The Erasmus+ framework provides for documentary checks, monitoring visits and improvement measures and, where there is poor performance or serious non-compliance, measures can extend to observation, suspension and, in serious or repeated cases, termination of the accreditation.

Perhaps those mechanisms need to be used more decisively when clear warning signs appear: coordinators repeatedly resigning, Erasmus teams disappearing every year, projects being sustained almost entirely by one person, recurring management conflicts, or a visible gap between what the Erasmus Plan says and the conditions under which it is actually being implemented.

In those situations, it is not enough simply to verify that mobilities took place or that forms were submitted. Other questions matter too: who is actually doing the work? With how much time? With what support? Is there really an Erasmus team, or does one only exist on paper?

Of course, oversight should not begin from a presumption of guilt, nor should every internal disagreement become a formal case. Schools are complex organisations. But when a repeated pattern is visible, asking for explanations is not a threat; it is quality assurance.

Institutional oversight should not only check what a school has done with Erasmus+. It should also check the conditions under which it has done it.

If serious shortcomings are identified, corrective measures should be required, their implementation should be monitored and, if the problems covered by the rules persist, the appropriate measures should follow. Otherwise, there is a risk of perpetuating abusive situations simply because the project somehow continues to function at someone else’s expense.

8. And if nothing changes

There may come a point at which the coordinator has explained the problem, provided evidence, proposed solutions and requested reorganisation without receiving an adequate response. At that point, limits have to be set. Calmly. With documentation. Professionally.

However, and unfortunately, sometimes you discover that you have been completely misled, and there is no option left but the drastic measure: resigning. It is sad, but desperate situations call for drastic remedies.

Resigning, in certain circumstances, does not have to be understood as failure. It may be the most professionally responsible decision when the conditions originally promised have disappeared, when there is no minimum support structure, or when continuing means personally assuming responsibilities that properly belong to the institution.

Even then, however, it is worth acting calmly: explain the reasons, document the difficulties, leave the information in order and, within reason, make the transition possible. Walking out and slamming the door may provide five minutes of relief. Leaving professionally protects years of work.

From complaint to structure

Major educational projects need enthusiastic teachers. But enthusiasm cannot become a budget line. They need time, teams, procedures, training, recognition, a genuine division of responsibilities and support from school leadership.

And they need something even more important: organisational honesty. Pointing out weaknesses does not mean attacking a school or its leadership team. It means trying to make the project sustainable.

Because the answer should never be to find another teacher willing to sacrifice themselves.

The solution should be to build an organisation, beyond the paperwork — which can make almost anything look possible — in which nobody has to carry everything alone.

In a future post, I will share a real proposal for doing exactly that.

Official documentation for further reading:
• Erasmus Accreditation: monitoring, checks and corrective measures — European Commission
• KA1 follow-up — SEPIE

Manuel Molina
Secondary School Teacher

The T.R.I.P. Guide From the Classroom to the Workshop, From the Workshop to Europe Transforming Adult Learning Forging the Future with Additive Manufacturing